Who Valery Gergiev is and why his concert at the Reggia di Caserta was cancelled
The Russian conductor, who heads the Bolshoi in Moscow and the Marinsky in St. Petersburg, is one of the world's leading symphony conductors. He has never condemned Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine
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Key points
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In the end, Valery Gergiev's concert at the Reggia di Caserta will not take place. After days of controversy and announced protests against the performance by the Russian conductor, who is a friend of Putin, the end comes in the form of a very brief communiqué: "The Director of the Royal Palace of Caserta has ordered the cancellation of the symphonic concert conducted by Valery Gergiev, planned as part of the Un'Estate da Re (A King's Summer) festival for 27 July in the courtyard of the Vanvitellian complex. So, a decision by the director of the Reggia, Tiziana Maffei, that goes in the opposite direction to the intentions of the governor of the Campania Region, the body that finances the review. Vincenzo De Luca, in fact, has repeatedly spoken out in favour of the Russian conductor's performance, in the name of 'dialogue that promotes peace', while the Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, has said he is against it because 'art is free, but propaganda is something else'.
The concert and the controversy
.The cancellation of the concert comes after two weeks of heated controversy. And there were fears of possible protests organised by Ukrainian associations for Sunday evening. The latest stances against Gergiev's concert were those of several Nobel laureates with letters sent to European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, the Italian authorities and the governor of Campania, Vincenzo De Luca. While 16,000 signatures were collected by an online petition.
Yulia Navalnaya's criticism
Among the first to make the accusations was Yulia Navalnaya, widow of the political dissident Aleksei Navalny who died in a prison in Siberia in 2024. In a letter to the daily newspaper 'La Repubblica' Navalnaya called Gergiev 'not only a friend and not only a supporter, but also a promoter of Putin's criminal policy, his accomplice and flanker', clamouring for the concert to be cancelled
The pro-Putin positions
.The conductor, head of Moscow's Bolshoi and St Petersburg's Marinsky, has never publicly condemned Vladimir Putin's actions, nor has he ever advocated peace in the Ukrainian lands. Emblematic was his choice for the evening of 18 July at the Bolshoi Theatre, in which he railed against the 'criminal regime in Kyiv that is destroying the Donbass'. Some local media showed projections of blow-ups in which a parallel was drawn between the war on Nazi-fascism and the current conflict in Ukraine, depicted as a fight for the freedom of the inhabitants of the Donbass.
The last concert in Italy in 2022
.Originally from the Caucasus and born in Moscow in 1953, Gergiev is today one of the world's leading symphonic conductors. Winner of numerous awards and decorated with artistic honours in his homeland, including 'Hero of the Russian Federation's Labour', he led numerous orchestras, including the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the World Orchestra for Peace and the London Symphony Orchestra, until 2015. The last time he conducted in Italy was at the Teatro La Scala in Milan on 23 February 2022, the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
